Category Archives: the meta

2010 hit like an angry bull in a brillo tornado. Well, not that bad, but it’s been pretty freakin’ nonstop. Work’s been crazy. Picked up some tech reading on the side. Been finishing the basement. A few ski trips. Daily-ish gym trips, yoga, and cycling. Lots of brewing. Sorry I haven’t been sharing. I’ve been somewhat holed up in many ways.

Anyways, I apologize. It’s not you, it’s me. But I hope to be visiting more often again. Remember the good times we’ve had?

It’s a new year and I have a lot of resolutions on my mind, and I’m working through what I want to really focus on. But two really stick in my mind as relevant and important. The first is to continue on the path that I set out on mid-year last year, cultivating relationships and habits that really help me move forward. The second is to make and drink more of my own beer, and specialty beers, and to spend less time drinking commodity beers, even from the great microbreweries.

These are the adventures that I will be sharing over the course of this new year in this space, I hope that you will join me!

Spent the night at my Aunt and Uncle’s place on the Sandy. It was a beautiful night, surprisingly warm in the tent, the sound of the river rushing past was soothing. Augie woke me up a bit early, and I joined my Uncle Corbett on a drive up to The Reel Tackle, a nice local tackle shop for some lures. Good thing, because I would soon be going through them quickly.

See, I’m not really the quintessential fisherman. I mean I’m not any good at it. I was feeling pretty good after my last visit despite the mishaps (two lost lures and a busted pole), as I’d been getting a feel for the river, and gaining confidence (coordination) in my knot-tying ability. And I pretty much cast all day with the aforementioned mishaps occuring pretty well-dispersed. Despite my only catch being a shoe, I was feeling pretty good.

Not so Sunday. UC gave me a shiny new fin chaser kit for an early birthday gift, and I was pretty darn excited to use it. Cast #1 went pretty well. The lure flew and I reeled it in. Just like fishing. But on my second cast something went awry. The lure sailed about 12 feet before about 30 yards of line miraculously leapt from the reel spontaneously and formed a tangle that would unsettle a third grade girl. A total mess. Scorched earth. I spent some time (foreshadowing how I would spend the majority of my day) attempting to tease the myriad knots out, but there was no angle. Snip. Snip. I didn’t lose the lure though.

I prepped another, made about four more casts, and lost the lure on a pretty minor snag. Like nothing. I’m sure that was a bad knot on my part. By this point I’d been fishing for a couple hours and had thrown my line maybe six times. I was beginning to remember why I don’t fish. But I got another lure strung to a leader and got back on the water. Cast. Snag. I tried to work the usual magic. Let some line out, whip it around, walk the shore up and down. To no avail. The lure was lost. At this point I was done. Totally freakin done.

I went inside and tied another lure, prepping for next year in case I decided to fish again. I watched some football and drank a beer. Looked up some knots on the internet and tried a more literal interpretation of the improved clinch knot. Got the lure tied on. Finished the beer (same one). Watched some football. Okay, let’s do this thing. The knots are tied. One more go.

I was feeling weird. Good, confident, but totally deflated at the same time. I’ve persevered. Three days now, countless Blue Foxes sacrificed to the kind deities beneath the surface of the Sandy. One cast. Felt good. I suspect a fish beneath the surface as I reel it in. So I cast above it. Well-placed. Snag. I dropped a few F’s and S’s and wtf’s and some other phrases I wouldn’t sully the internet with. Snagged pretty good. Up, down, right, left, release. Wow! I got it free. Breathe. Relax.

At this point, I had a few words with the river. I believe we came to an understanding. I thanked the river for letting me come out and earn a reason to swear. I asked the river, “Why is it that yo are doing this to me? I’ve been kind, and hope to continue to be kind to you. Have I angered you, I apologise for what actions I may have taken to upset you. I don’t even need to catch a fish, just allow me to keep flinging this piece of metal into your beautiful flow a few more times without taking it.” Or something like that. I think I mentioned that I hadn’t been urinating into it as well.

Cast some more. A few more minor snags. I notice the lure is scratched and bent from the abuse I am levelling on it. But I don’t let that phase me. I bend the barbs back in a manly way, to allow the spinning action to flourish. And I cast and I cast.

Life is getting better all the time. Drink beer from your kegerator and it will let the world know. Spark Fun makes it possible (I’ll have to checkout their toys!). Link via Kelly of the Oregon Brew Crew.

I finally broke down and got me a flickr account. Now I have photos at picasaweb, facebook, and flickr. So, now I have wonder…what goes where? I’m thinking that the picasaweb will continue to be my library-type space. Pretty much all my photos go there. Then facebook gets the goofy fun ones, the parties, whatever. And lastly, flickr will diplay my favorites. Some I think are good photos, some are representative of what I’m about, and some just end up there.

So now I guess it’s time to play around with my online galleries and see what really excels where, doing what. Any thoughts on that? How do you use galleries online?

Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for president (of the United States). Personally, I think this is huge. A Republican who has always provided a steady, well-reasoned approach, he is widely respected on both sides of the aisle.

But this is more than “a rightie supports Obama.” This is support from a figure broadly and recently well-regarded in national defense.

“As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it,” Mr. Powell said. “But I think we need a generational change.” – Colin Powell

Tired of all the right-wing emails I’d receive, and especially the fact (yes, fact) that most of them contain gross inaccuracies or straightout lies, I began writing and sending my own emails. I am trying to keep them as factual as possible, and while they highlight issues more popular on the left than on the right, I am trying to present facts in a “think about it” approach, rather than an editorial.

I’ve received requests from friends to send these emails so that they can forward to their families, so I’m going to post them here. I’ll include legacy emails too, so at first they won’t be in any particular order than the one I find them in.

After quite a bit of work I’ve got a new version of beerdrinker.org ready to rock. Some of the new features are pretty obvious…a new banner and some random photos. But there are other new features. I’ve included a feed of my latest ficlets so at least you can tell I haven’t been slacking too much if I haven’t been posting. Then there’s the beer grab bag on the right, so if you’re ever thirsty and not sure what to consume, just checkout that doodad and let you thirst be forever quenched. Then there’s a bunch of new stuff under the hood. WordPress 2.3, some tagging tools, pretty permalinks (I was a bit late on that adoption), and more.

So, I’d love to hear what you think of the new look and other features. If something doesn’t look right or is just plain broken, or if you think something’s really cool. I’ve done a ton of (simple) customizing on the theme and I’m happy to share.

And thanks for the callout, Jack…I can only hope that y’all visited when I wasn’t busy breaking it.

I had a bunch of stuff to say today, but I ended up having to do a bunch of maintenance on the site.Â One of my buddies, who has a subdomain from me is getting hammered and it used up all my bandwidth.Â Sorry ojingo, had to turn you off for a few days until we can figure out what’s causing it.Â A few other little things, and now I have to get out of here.Â So cheers, and have a cold one!

Alright, so according to google I’m now the #1 repository for “scared kitty” and it’s taking quite a bit of traffic. Beer drinker gets plenty from the internet community, so I’ll keep holding onto it. BUT I’ve lowered the quality of this pic…saves me about 10KB per transfer which is more than it sounds like. You can still get the original at http://www.beerdrinker.org/images/scared_kitty_orig.jpg. By original, I don’t mean that I created it, because I didn’t and I have no idea who did. I did the same thing to the beer disaster picture. The original is now at http://www.beerdrinker.org/images/beer_disaster_orig.jpg.

btw, the original kitty post is here and the original beer disaster post is here.

ugh…my machine went down hard last week.Â Problem turned out to be a bad stick of RAM and is fixed now, so I should get stuff back up.Â Still recovering because some system stuff was upgraded during the bad memory time and now some things are hosed.Â In the meantime I got me a new friend, a MacBook.

woohoo! found a really cool script called bbips to handle scaling down all my images. I’ve replaced all the big ones from before with blog-friendly pics, so scroll down and take a gander at them all happy on one page. And I’ll get some more up here asap too!